14th July EAVAN BOLAND
Poet Eavan Boland explores the relationship between gender, art, and national identity in her work.

15th July Classic American Poetry followed by STANLEY KUNITZ
Stanley Kunitz‘s numerous books have won numerous awards which include a National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and the National Medal of Arts. Mr. Kunitz, United States Poet Laureate in 2000, is a founder of the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Poets House in New York City.

16th July KEVIN YOUNG
Kevin Young often finds meaning and inspiration for his poetry in African American music, particularly the blues. His recent book The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness won the 2010 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical chorus to illustrate ways African American culture is American culture. “I don’t mean to taxonomize but to rhapsodize. Take it from me—mean mean mean to be free.”

17th July AUGUST KLEINZAHLER
August Kleinzahler‘s poetry is described by the New York Times as “a modernist swirl of sex, surrealism, urban life and melancholy with a jazzy back beat. His personality combines Allen Ginsberg’s goofball charm and Norman Mailer’s inveterate pugnacity.”

18th July BRIAN TURNER and BRUCE WEIGL
Brian Turner is a soldier-poet whose debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, won the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection. The poems speak with compassion, sympathy, and horror of the first-hand experience of war and with immediacy of loss, beauty, comradeship, and longing for home and the familiar; he deplores the violence and acknowledges the grief and terror of war.
Bruce Weigl is the author of 12 collections of poetry, most recently Declension in the Village of Chung Luong which created “an eloquent spokesman for an entire generation of Americans whose lives were broken by the war and a country whose moral confusion desperately needed addressing.”
19th July MICHAEL ONDAATJE
Michael Ondaatje, poet, novelist, and noted editor and film maker,came to a wider public attention with the Oscar winning film the English Patient, based on his book. However he first won critical acclaim as a poet with numerous published collections.